


Sparrowheart

by sawbones



Series: birds of a feather [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dry Humping, Heartfelt Yearning For A Human Connection In The Cold Lonely Depths Of Space, Identity Issues, M/M, Size Kink, not a crackfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 05:58:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7422613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sawbones/pseuds/sawbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren finds an unlikely friend on the edge of space when a lonely young Lieutenant takes an interest in Matt, his alter ego.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sparrowheart

**Author's Note:**

> [kylo-knight-ren](http://kylo-knight-ren.tumblr.com/), my beta reader. 
> 
> Inspired directly by a post from [kylostahp](http://kylostahp.tumblr.com).

“What is wrong with you? Why is this so hard for you to understand?”

‘Matt’ glared from under his brow at the senior technician looming over him as he squatted beside a nest of exposed wired. His hands fisted in the material of his khaki jumpsuit as he struggled to dampen the coil of anger in his gut, “I don’t know. I don’t know! Will you stop yelling at me?”

The senior technician’s mouth worked like she was chewing on something unpleasant, “Stop yelling at you? Stop  _ yelling  _ at you? I’ll stop yelling when you pull your head out your ass and recalibrate the calcinator so I can get on with my day, Mike! I mean really, what is the problem here? It’s a simple rewiring job. What, did you just graduate? One too many shocks or something?”

“Matt,” Kylo said. He dropped his gaze to stare holes through the detached panel on the floor. It began to tremble slightly and he had to look away.

“What?”

“You called me Mike. My name,” Kylo took a sharp breath, “—is Matt.”

“My name is Matt. My name is Matt,” she parroted in a mocking voice. She shoved her hand in his face and pushed him backwards, causing him to lose his balance and topple to the side. He landed on his toolbox, spilling the contents across the floor with a clatter, “I don’t give a shit if your name is Blobbo the Hutt, if you can’t tell the difference between SE and NM cables you may as well space yourself because you’re no kriffing use to me. Get it done _ , Matt _ .” 

She left at that point, entirely unaware of invisible fingers looping around her neck like a noose until she turned a corner and Kylo dropped his fist. He stayed like that for several long seconds, half-sprawled across the deck while the crew went about their business in the corridor, stepping around him like he wasn’t even there. He thought life as Matt would be easy, a respite from his responsibilities, if only for a few hours at a time. He didn’t expect that it would come with its own burdens and as insignificant as this failure was, it weighed on him and his cheeks burned with the shame of it.

Kylo sat up and began to gather his thoughts along with his tools. He’d had enough of Matt for one day and resolved to return to his quarters and consider how to punish the insolent senior technician without leaving a trail back to his secret identity. He paused to readjust his crooked glasses and tried to ignore the lingering reluctance to take them off again so soon. Instead of meditating on punishment, he supposed he could find a different radar technician and carefully extract the knowledge from their mind. That way he could complete the task as required, and his boss would be forced to apologise which would be its own special kind of suffering for her. He nearly smiled at the thought until he realised he had mentally referred to her as his  _ boss _ ; he scoffed instead, and shut his toolbox with more force than necessary. He pushed himself to his feet and turned to leave, very nearly walking straight into a man who was standing behind him. The man – a young, wan-faced Lieutenant – was holding one of Matt’s wrenches in front of his chest like a shield, his eyes wide in alarm. Kylo stared at him. The Lieutenant stared back. 

“I believe you dropped this,” he said and thrust it at him. The man seemed to be crackling with nervous energy and Kylo wanted to reach out and skim the surface of his mind to see why, but he refrained. He tried to not used the Force so much as Matt, partly as an exercise in familiarising himself with people in a different way, partly just to enjoy the peace. He accepted the wrench, slipping it into his toolbelt.

“Thank you,” Kylo said after a moment, because the other man still hadn’t left and he assumed that was why. He lingered on. Evidently not.

“Are you alright?” the Lieutenant asked hesitantly. When he was met with a blank stare, he seemed to get a little flustered. Concern peeled off him in sparks; concern for Matt, concern that he had embarrassed himself already, “I wouldn’t take it personally—what Tanner said, I mean. She’s under a lot of pressure; this sector incurs more damage than the deployment rota anticipated, leaving her understaffed. At least, that’s my understanding.”

“Right,” Kylo said. He didn’t understand why the Lieutenant had stopped to tell him this, inevitably disrupting his own schedule, but he filed the information away to look into later anyway. For Kylo, redistribution of technicians meant nothing. Less than nothing. For Matt, it could change his entire routine. He pushed his glasses up his nose, frowning a little, “I have work to do.”

The Lieutenant was at first surprised and then slightly crestfallen at his apparent dismissal, but didn’t seem to take offense at the lack of rank, “Hm? Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Pardon me. As you were.”

He left in one direction and Kylo the other, and in that moment he was almost forgotten entirely—until at the other end of the corridor, just he was out of range, a thought reached Kylo through the crowd. 

_ His name is Matt.  _

He hadn’t meant to pick it up but it was a reflex like catching a ball someone had thrown at him suddenly, and once he heard it the rest couldn’t be ignored. They flitted over the heads of the others, lovely little sparrow-boned thoughts coming to nest in the palm of Kylo’s mind.

_ Matt is new. Matt seems nice. I’m going to write up Tanner for misconduct. Tanner is going to be stricken off. I’ve seen Matt around. Tall Matt. Blond Matt. Matt seems nice. _

Kylo carried them all the way back to his quarters, turning them over and over looking for some ulterior motive, some unsavoury implication. As far as he could remember, he’d never spoken to the man as Kylo Ren or Matt the Radar Technician. He seemed vaguely familiar but there were hundreds of anxious, grey-faced officers on board and he could have been any among them, though he didn’t trust a single one to be kind for the sake of kindness. To seek the approval of a subordinate. Perhaps he had some electronic contraband that needed fixing. There had to be some other reason, so Kylo looked and he looked.

He didn’t find any, and somehow that disturbed him more.

\--

Kylo almost immediately came to find that the man’s name was Lieutenant Mitaka, and he was a regular feature on Hux’s bridge, which was where the familiarity had come from. He had pinpointed him as soon as he stepped on deck the next day to have a word with the General about adjusting the technician deployment rota. With his cap pulled low and his expression one of cool neutrality, Mitaka seemed far more at ease while he worked then when he attempted to talk with Matt. Unleashed from the restraints of his alter ego, Kylo reached out to rake his fingers through the shallows of the Lieutenant’s mind to see what details he could find. He pulled back at the last moment, barely breaking the surface. Some things leaked through; his given name was Dopheld, he had excelled at the Academy, his breakfast had been unsatisfying and he wanted to be on the first lunch shift. 

Mitaka looked up from his console, his brows contracted like he had sensed the disturbance. Kylo didn’t want to go further but he struggled to pin-point  _ why  _ since at that point it was almost a reflex, and there wasn’t a soul aboard that ship that could stop him if that’s what he desired. Was it what he desired? Did he really need to plunder the cerebellum of some unfortunate Lieutenant at his station, or did he just want to hear his name on someone else’s mind? 

Matt’s name. Did he want to hear Matt’s name on someone else’s mind.

“Do what is required,” he said, cutting Hux off abruptly. He hadn’t been listening to what the General had been saying anyway; it was either excuses or accusations, and Kylo had little interest in hearing either. The curl of disgust in his lip let Kylo know the message had been received and he swept off the bridge without leave.

Kylo was used to the spikes of fear that followed where he came and went, rising and falling like signal flares through rooms and along corridors. For the first time since arriving on the Finalizer, he was aware of one that burned a little brighter than the rest.

\--

The mess hall was never a place Kylo actually visited as himself. He ate alone, or occasionally with his Knights when they were on board; they prepared his meals for him, or a droid did. He preferred the solitude. Used his rare mealtimes as a small window of quiet in his schedule. To disturb him then was a grave mistake and everyone knew it. 

As Matt, he loved it. It was here he was at his most anonymous and yet also the closest he was able be with the crew. Thousands of people every shift passed through the mess hall, but he could go months without seeing the same face twice. Those who were fortunate enough to be on a regular deployment rota usually sat together; those who weren’t either ate alone or struck up a conversation with whoever happened to be sitting at the same table. Kylo liked that. It made it easier for him to talk to people, or simply to listen and gather information. Petty gossip, grievances, opinions, desires—he sifted through it all, discarded the chaff and filed away anything remotely valuable. He used that info to lift the most loyal, most beloved, and to push down the rest, thus subtly strengthening his own position on the ship without appearing to do anything at all. In the grand scheme of things such adjustments were a small play in the long game, but a desert was made of grains of sand. 

Sometimes it was nice to just talk. Kylo liked to change Matt’s story with each new person he spoke to. He was the son of a disgraced Colonel, brought up on ships, and flunked out of a prestigious engineering school. He was an orphan from the Rims, his talent was self-taught maintaining dirt-farm machinery. He used to be a pilot before a head injury grounded him and he was retrained, that’s why he was that age and that far down the ladder. They weren’t his own stories, they were ones recycled from other crew members he’d met before. He wished they were his own stories. Sometimes wished they weren’t stories at all.

Matt shuffled forward in the slow but steadily moving line until he reached the serving droid. The droid beeped once and he held out his tray to be filled. It beeped again and he moved on, collecting his cutlery as he wandered towards the tables. He had to hunch his shoulders to make himself look smaller, since there was only one person on the ship as big or bigger than Kylo Ren and he didn’t want to pull any more attention to himself than he already did. It was not overly busy considering most of the crew in this lunch shift were still queuing to be served. He scanned the hall for someone who looked worth talking to, and immediately his eye was drawn to a familiar dark head. 

Mitaka was sitting alone, pushing his food around his tray absently as he browsed a holopad. He looked tired and more than a little stressed out, but then again he always did, and Kylo began to wonder if perhaps that was just his face. It was quite an unusual face, he noted. A small, full-lipped mouth that gave the impression he was constantly about to ask a question he didn’t want answered, dark heavy-lidded eyes, and jug-ears to rival Kylo’s own. He looked like he lived on the verge of tears, even at his most relaxed.

Kylo didn’t realise he was staring until Mitaka looked up and met his gaze. His eyes widened a little, not in fear but in recognition and surprise. He glanced behind him to check it wasn’t someone else Kylo was eyeballing, then raised his hand in a shy salutation. Kylo went to him. 

“Can I sit here?” he asked, and sat down before Mitaka could answer. 

“Hello, ah—“ Mitaka began, then paused as though he couldn’t quite remember Matt’s name. He could, of course. Practically shouted it in his head when he saw him, “Matt, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Kylo said. He nodded once, “Hello.”

There was a half beat where Mitaka apparently expected Kylo to continue, and when he didn’t it threw him off balance. He cleared his throat, “I hope you’re having a better day than the last time we met.”

The sentiment was genuine, as was his half smile. Kylo hadn’t seen Tanner since that day she had told him to space himself. 

“No-one has yelled at me yet,” he said, and that at least was true. The fact it was probably because he’d only been Matt for a few hours seemed a moot point. 

“I wish I could say the same,” Mitaka said with a strange breathy sort of laugh. His smiled died off when Matt didn’t join in and he picked up his fork again, fidgeting with it, “Well, they didn’t yell, I suppose. It’s the voice, you know.  _ The  _ voice. General Hux is very good at it.”

“Hux mistreats you?” Kylo questioned, leaning in. Mitaka’s mouth twitched at the noted lack of rank in the question.

“No, no. The General is a good man. He’s just—particular. I believe he holds his officers to the same standards he holds himself, which is fair,” he said, lowering his eyes.“He makes me nervous.”

Kylo’s first reaction was amusement; the idea of finding Hux anything more than a shrill annoyance in jackboots was a poor joke; he wasn’t even a Force user. He had to remind himself that from below, even the smallest man could look like a giant, “What about Kylo Ren?”

“What about a rancor?” Mitaka said, tapping his fork against his tray.

“Kylo Ren could crush us all with one thought, but he doesn’t. If you are loyal and obedient, you have nothing to fear from Kylo Ren,” Ren said. He knew he sounded defensive. It didn’t stop him.

The Lieutenant looked away, his pale cheeks heating up. Kylo sensed he felt embarrassed for being too open with Matt already and managing to annoy him in less than a minute’s conversation. He wanted desperately for Matt to like him. It was a broadcasted desire that caught Kylo off-guard. He shifted in his seat, mentally pulling away from the Lieutenant so he couldn’t eavesdrop on his thoughts any more. He wondered if it was a sex thing. People had wanted to have sex with him before. Well, not  _ him _ ; the idea of him, of Kylo Ren. They had never known him, or seen his face. In their fantasies he wasn’t a man, he was a creature, a machine, smoke given form. He was usually hurting them. Kylo found it distasteful, and he was afraid he would sense Mitaka thinking the same of Matt.

“He is intimidating,” he conceded once the silence pulled into something uncomfortable.

“Would you like my milk?” Mitaka asked, pushing for a different conversation. He picked up the unopened carton and held it out to Matt, “It’s just that I can’t eat dairy, and I hate to see it go to waste.”

Kylo blinked at Mitaka. The ‘milk’ they served aboard the ship was essentially grey water made with a mineral powder mix and probably hadn’t been touched by a living creature until the carton was opened, nevermind come from one. He took the carton and sat it beside his own, also untouched. After a moment’s consideration, he offered his jello cup in exchange. 

“Oh, no, that’s really not—“ Mitaka began and cut himself off when Kylo dropped the jello cup on his tray anyway, “Thank you.”

“I’ll drink all your milk,” Kylo said. He paused. That didn’t sound like a normal-person thing to say, “I mean, I’ll take the milk you don’t want. I like milk.”

He hated the ‘milk’. It was gritty and tasted faintly of chalk. He’d rather have the recycled water and a vitamin pill. Mitaka smiled and it was tolerable. Maybe Matt liked milk.

“I’ll remember that the next time we have lunch,” he said, opening the jello. They ate together in what Kylo considered to be companionable silence after that. It was nice, he thought. He wanted to do it again.  

\--

Each person’s thought process had a distinct and unique feeling to it that Kylo could pick up on with enough consideration. General Hux, for example, felt like a crack in the ice on a frozen lake: a dozen sharp but defined threads branching off in different directions, seemingly at random but actually guided by minute flaws. Left Kylo feeling cold and unsteady if he pressed too hard. Captain Phasma’s was like a length of rope or ribbon being coiled; linear, smooth enough, generally going in circles and easily tangled. 

Mitaka’s thoughts were a flock of starlings, sparrows. Lots of them, light and quite pretty, capable of surprising heights. Impressive in a vaguely unsettling way when they all moved as one, like when he was working, but if you threw a cat among them there was chaos the Lieutenant found hard to recover from. A few weeks and Kylo was no longer that cat. He was a birdwatcher.

They had lunch together almost every day that Kylo could afford since the first time. No-one joined them, no-one spoke to them. Sometimes they chatted and sometimes they didn’t. Kylo liked to hear about Mitaka’s day, found the mundanity and routine of it oddly comforting, but sometimes the Lieutenant just wanted company. Those were his bad days, and the days when Kylo was content to sit quietly as they ate and watch Mitaka’s flighty thoughts from a distance. The temptation to go deeper was still there but he ignored it resolutely. He was Matt. He wasn’t a masterful Force user, he was a radar technician. If he wanted to know something about someone he had to use his words.

“Why do you never use the officer’s mess hall? It must be nicer than this one,” Kylo asked one day, just as they sat down together. Mitaka didn’t seem to mind whether he sat across the table from him, or beside him. Kylo was tall enough that their legs touched either way and Mitaka had stopped flinching away from it.

“There’s actually not much of a difference, really. It’s a smaller, quieter. They have real caf there,” he said. They swapped the milk and jello like they always did. Mitaka ate one jello before his food and one after. Kylo never once drank either carton. Neither of them commented on the other’s habit, “I just prefer it here.”

Kylo assumed he meant it was less obvious that he was always sitting alone in the crew’s mess hall, “Do you not have any friends there? Someone you can sit with?”

“I have a friend here,” Mitaka deflected. Kylo almost asked who before he realised. 

Friend, friend, friend. The word rang like a silver bell between them. He’d never had a friend before, not as a child, not as an apprentice. He was sure his Knights didn’t count. Kylo smiled and Mitaka suddenly couldn’t meet his eye. His jaw worked as he chewed on words he apparently didn’t know how to say.

“Do you play dejarik? I do. Would you like to do that together some time?” the Lieutenant asked. His voice was light and breathy but he didn’t give Kylo a chance to answer, “What am I even saying, of course you will be busy after your shift with your own friends. That’s alright, nevermind.”

Kylo considered it. He was supposed to have a meeting with Hux and Phasma that evening. They were looking to move onto the next phase of their plan, and Kylo had been neglecting his duties, “I’ll arrive at your quarters at twenty-one hundred. Have the board ready and we will play.”

There was a vague sensation like a dozen birds chirping all at once as Mitaka tried to dampen his twinned excitement and anxiety. He opened his first pot of jello and dug the spoon in, breaking it up into a mush just so he had something to do with his hands, “I look forward to it.”

\--

The meeting with Hux and Phasma had been about as pleasant as Kylo had expected it to be. They had taken turns admonishing him for letting his duties slip—not directly, of course, but in the passive, snide manner they often did. The look on Hux’s face when he realised that Kylo was once again not even listening very nearly made the whole sorry experience worth it. They were right, of course. He had been absent (more than usual), and it was unprofessional of him (more than usual), but he was tired and there was nothing in their plan at that stage which required his immediate personal attention. 

His Knights of Ren were the physical manifestation of his absolute will, he reminded himself as he stood outside the door to Lieutenant Mitaka’s quarters. They went and performed as he bid without fail, and until the moment came for him to step to the plate he could rest and plan and bide his time as he saw fit. 

He hadn’t pressed the buzzer yet because he was early and didn’t want to stress his host out by arriving unexpectedly.

(After all, even Darth Vader sought companionship in his youth.)

He wondered if he should have brought some sort of gift.

Kylo could sense someone coming along the adjacent corridor, heading towards where he was waiting. He pressed the buzzer, thinking it was better to be early than suspicious since all suspicious activity was to be reported and that was the last thing either of them needed. The door slid open immediately, revealing a flustered looking Mitaka in drab civilian clothes. He looked surprised to see Matt despite the fact he had clearly been pressed against the other side of the door, waiting for him. 

“Ah, Matt. I thought—“ Mitaka began. His face was flushed and his brow slightly damp, almost as though he’d been running or sparring beforehand. He let whatever he was going to say die and smiled instead, stepping aside, “It’s good to see you, please come in.”

Mitaka’s quarters were much like the man himself; neat, grey, giving the impression of being slightly cramped despite not actually being small. A blocky looking L-shaped couch took up most of the living room, a small dejarik table nestled at the corner. It was set up and ready to play as Kylo had asked, and he had the feeling it had been since Mitaka’s shift ended. The Lieutenant drifted into his line of sight, wringing his hands in front of him. The chirping was practically deafening.

“Would you like something to drink? Caf or--?” he gestured vaguely towards one of the closed side doors. 

“Caf is good,” Kylo said. He didn’t want a drink but Mitaka’s anxiety was bleeding all over the room and saying no would make it worse. He waited on the stiff sofa for him to return, and thought about why he was there.

Mitaka was nervous, not because he  _ feared _ Kylo, but because he  _ liked  _ Matt. Kylo didn’t need to dabble in his mind to know that since he had a habit of loudly broadcasting his thoughts in the same way every feeling he had paraded itself across his face. It was something Kylo was growing increasingly fond of. It made things easier for Matt. Made it easier for Matt to like Mitaka too, which he did. 

Mitaka came back with two small cups of caf and a fresh shirt on. He seemed to have calmed himself down a little in the other room, and whatever anxiety was left was mostly residual. It had been replaced by something warmer, more hopeful. When Kylo deliberately let their fingers touch as he accepted the caf, Mitaka dropped his own cup on the dejarik holoboard and fried it. It all worked out in the end though; after a great deal of incredibly sincere apologising Mitaka remembered he had a physical set of pieces that his mother had gifted him when he won some sort of competition at the Academy. They weren’t strictly dejarik pieces – they were little people and buildings, carved out of some sort of hard plastic – but they worked just as well. 

Kylo won the first two games without much difficulty. He conceded and let Mitaka take the third, hopefully without making it too obvious that he had. They talked as they played, or Mitaka did at least. He told Kylo all about his unremarkable childhood and unremarkable youth, his overbearing mother and distant father, and all the other things that Kylo could have guessed about him after their first meeting. There was something about the way he spoke of it, tinged with nostalgia and the unhappiness of his current position, which made Kylo yearn for a life so free of  _ everything _ . He wanted to be the quiet, bright, unassuming son of mid-tier bureaucrats. He wanted the high point of his younger years to be winning some silly game competition at the Academy. 

Mitaka pressed for details of his own life. Kylo drank his caf and said he didn’t want to talk about it. Mitaka didn’t ask questions after that; lots of men in the First Order had lives they didn’t want to talk about, even radar technicians. It’s what happened when a generation was born in the death of an empire and the turmoil that followed. 

Kylo mostly didn’t want to lie to him more than he had to.

“I can’t believe it’s this late already. I didn’t even notice the time,” Mitaka said, sometime close to zero-hundred hours.  They had finished their last game a while ago and there was a lapse in the conversation. At some point Mitaka had moved to Kylo’s side of the couch while they talked. He had taken off his shoes and sat with his feet tucked beneath him, close enough that their arms brushed every time he took a sip of his now-cold caf. 

“Your shift starts again in six hours. I should go,” Kylo said. Mitaka leaned into him minutely and he felt pinned to the couch. He didn’t want to leave and the Lieutenant didn’t want him to go. They stayed like that for a long, painful moment but neither of them did anything more. Mitaka was the first to look away with cheeks burning, and Kylo quickly stood up. 

“I had a nice time tonight,” he said earnestly, “We will do this again soon.”

Mitaka showed him to the door with only the slightest reluctance, like a good host should. They lingered there, hands on hands as they bid each other a good night perhaps more thoroughly than they needed to considering they would almost certainly meet at lunch the next day again. 

Kylo was reckless on the long walk back to his own secluded quarters. He didn’t avoid other crew members, didn’t take a winding route. Didn’t care who saw this strange man, grinning from ear to ear as he slipped into Kylo Ren’s lair. His name was Matt the radar technician, and he had someone who cared about him.

\--

Two weeks and another four dejarik sessions later, they found themselves curled up on Mitaka’s awful sofa together again. They had only played one game that evening and Mitaka had been quiet, distracted. His mother had missed another one of their semi-regular holocalls; their correspondence had become increasingly fraught over the last few weeks. His parents couldn’t understand how he could be unhappy in his current position. He had done so well, come so far, made them so proud – in fact all his father ever spoke to him about was his service, his progression, the next step up. They spoke less than they did before his officer graduation, which had been nearly not at all. Mitaka was tired.

“They don’t know what it’s like out here,” he said. He had his head on Kylo’s shoulder, his hand on his arm, “They don’t know how lonely it can be.”

Kylo knew how lonely it could be. He took ahold of Mitaka’s hand and turned to press a clumsy kiss to the corner of his mouth because Matt knew too. Mitaka sighed and closed his eyes, tried to climb into a deeper kiss using the front of Matt’s jumpsuit for purchase. He parted his lips when Kylo took him by the jaw, parted his legs when he pushed him flat on his back. It was sweet and awkward and lovely, and Kylo’s nose got in the way, and his glasses were smudged, and Mitaka began to panic when he couldn’t breathe easily. It was a lot all at once, maybe too much. They broke apart and Kylo came to rest his head on Mitaka’s chest instead. Under his cheek the Lieutenant’s heart was racing, fluttering wildly like a trapped bird.

“Are you scared?” Kylo asked, and Mitaka went very still.

“Yes,” he said, “But not of you.”

\--

Kylo wasn’t sure he had ever spent this much time with someone since he was a child. Not alone, person to person. It was unfamiliar and frustrating, but also fun and more satisfying than he thought it could be. It was like learning to play a new instrument if that instrument could smile back at him, kiss his neck, ask him to stay a while longer. It was a novel and lovely thing to be quietly adored. 

It couldn’t last. Not uninterrupted, at least. 

Neither Snoke nor the mission could be kept waiting. Even his Knights had been reaching out for him, sending him soft, insistent visions of trees without leaves, skies without stars, endless snowy fields. They all meant the same thing: we miss you. Come back to us.

So Kylo did.

He met with Snoke and Hux first, then Hux and Phasma. Once the plan had been decided upon, he brought his Knights together and gave them their instructions. They gathered around him, reverently touching his helmet against theirs’; they made soft noises of pleasure, contentment. They were glad he had come when they called, like children tugging at the hem of his robes.

Kylo felt much the same as he lay in Mitaka’s bed that evening, curled around his Lieutenant, Matt’s glasses forgotten on the bedside table. This was new for them. Kylo hadn’t even been in Mitaka’s sleeping quarters before, nevermind crawled into bed. It felt like being told a secret. He wished he had more time to learn the intimacies of his too-soft pillows, and the dark grey regulation briefs that matched the dark grey regulation socks. 

“I have to leave soon,” Kylo said, lips against the crown of Mitaka’s head, “Leave the ship, I mean.”

Mitaka stirred from the edge of sleep. He wasn’t tired and it wasn’t that late, but he felt warm and comfortable enveloped by Kylo as he was, “Shore leave?”

“Kylo Ren is going on another mission. He could be gone for a while, so he wants a technician on the u-class with him. He chose me,” he said. It was a ridiculous lie but Mitaka trusted him implicitly.

“Where is he taking you?” Mitaka asked. He tried to turn around so he was facing Kylo, but Kylo tightened his hold on him. It was easier if he didn’t look him in the eyes.

“I don’t know,” he said. There would be several destinations, following their quarry like bloodhounds on a hunt. He knew where they would start, but perhaps not where they would end.

“For how long?”

“I don’t know,” Kylo said again, and this time it was the truth, “It might be weeks. At least two.”

Mitaka was worried. He projected it so strongly it felt almost like a physical force, pushing at Kylo anxiously. Rather than withdrawing from it, Kylo reached out with the Force and gently moulded himself around Mitaka’s mind. To do it painlessly and unnoticed required the sort of finesse he wasn’t familiar with, but he had to know what to do, what to say. Mitaka was scared that Matt – tall Matt, blond Matt, Matt who seemed sweet, Matt who  _ was _ sweet but a little obtuse and not always very good at his job – would do something to anger Ren and end up getting hurt, or get caught in some space-borne dog-fight and crash land on a forgotten little planet never to be seen again, or any number of unlikely happenings that had taken flight around Mitaka’s head. 

“Don’t worry, I will be fine,” Kylo said with as much gentle conviction as he could muster. He laid a kiss on Mitaka’s bare shoulder and felt the grip on his arm tighten, “I’ll come back.”

“Matt—“ Mitaka began, but words failed him. He couldn’t ask him not to go, and he felt too foolish to say out loud he wished he would stay. It was work. It was duty. It was an honour, or at least it should have felt like one. Kylo knew there was little he could do to assuage his fears so instead he simply kissed Mitaka again, this time a little higher on his neck, and enjoyed the way the little sparks of pleasure parted the grey fog of his anxiety.

Kylo tried to read what he desired but it seemed the Lieutenant himself didn’t know what he wanted – other than Matt to  _ keep going _ . Still firmly held back to chest, Mitaka turned his head to bare his throat to Kylo as much as he could. It appealed to the animal part of Kylo’s brain but he resisted the urge to bite, instead focusing on retracing his steps with soft kisses up his neck until he reach a prominent ear. He traced the shell of it with a curious tongue, let his teeth graze the lobe; Mitaka smiled and squirmed, not sure if it felt nice or simply ticklish, but glad for the attention either way. It was like a Force-led game of hot-or-cold with Kylo pawing at him until the feedback told him he was on the right path. Neck was good, ear less so, and the response he got when he slid a hand beneath Mitaka’s soft under-shirt to caress his chest surprised them both. Kylo dragged his thumb across a nipple then pinched it, hard enough to border on painful in a way that made Mitaka’s stomach clench.

“Sensitive,” Kylo murmured to himself like a scientist making observations. Mitaka exhaled in a half-laugh and took Kylo gently by the wrist, guiding his hand down his stomach to the waistband of his briefs. He seemed hesitant whether he should lead him further or leave him there, wanting more but not sure how to ask for it. Kylo made the choice for him, pushing his hand beyond the waistband, fingertips brushing over short curls until he reached Mitaka’s cock. His skin was so soft but he was hard, and Kylo wrapped his long fingers around him and began to stroke in short, firm pulls. He squeezed, marvelling at the way Mitaka shivered and arched against him with just a touch, marvelling that this was happening at all. He was making someone feel like that, he was making someone moan and writhe - not the spectre of Kylo Ren, not the idea of the mask, but his actual self. Maybe it wasn’t his real name but it was his real face, his real body, his real cock that had Mitaka mentally measuring him up, comparing it to the dull empty ache in the pit of his gut and finding it a perfect fit. 

The Lieutenant couldn’t decided whether he wanted to grind back against Kylo or fuck into his tight, warm grip. He felt pulled, pinched, trapped in the best way; his feedback was like a seismograph scratching the inside of Kylo’s skull, and it only served to spur him on. He buried his face in the crook of Mitaka’sneck like he was trying to breathe him in as he rocked him between cock and hand. It was good, it was beautiful, and it wasn’t enough. The rhythm was off as they awkwardly moved against each other, and Kylo couldn’t find the leverage, the friction. With a hiss of frustration Kylo shoved Mitaka onto his stomach and pulled himself on top of him, bearing down with his full weight. Mitaka struggled at first but Kylo caught him by the wrists and kept him pinned to the mattress while he rutted against him.

Mitaka could barely breathe, but he could breathe enough to whine Matt’s name against the pillow as he pushed back as much as he could, desperate for more. He filled both their heads with vivid projections of what it would be like for Matt to fuck him like that, crushed to the mattress, filled up, used up. Again he was so much larger than life in the mental images and Mitaka thought it was perfect, someone who could hold him down and pull him apart without hurting him once.

Kylo didn’t know if he could do it without hurting him. The desire was already there, the urge to grab, to squeeze, to bite as he panted open-mouthed against the back of Mitaka’s mouth, teeth on skin and lips spit-slicked. He didn’t know what it would be like to actually be inside of Mitaka, since he’d never done it before; neither had Mitaka, though he had this idea that Matt knew what he was doing, mistaking the Force for experience. It was already so much, his cock on Mitaka’s still-clothed back side, cotton-on-cotton not skin-on-skin, skin  _ in _ skin. Mitaka flexed his fingers like he was trying to reach for something.

“Matt--” he said, voice cracked, words half caught in his throat, “Matt, I think-- I might--”

“Yes,” Kylo sighed. He didn’t know if Mitaka was warning him or asking for permission but it didn’t matter, “Yes, please, yes.”

Part of him wanted Mitaka to give in, to let go; the other part of him knew that he would be able to feel the residual pleasure and  _ stars _ , he was so close it would be enough to pull him over the edge too. Mitaka’s breath hitched and he grasped desperately at the bedsheets, his lithe body pulled taut as a bowstring as he came with a shudder Kylo could feel in his bones. Kylo opened himself up as much as the Force would let him, so far he felt for a dizzying second he could fall right into Mitaka, and greedily drank in all their shared sensations. It was borderline too much for either of them, both off them, and he came with a sound like a wounded animal.

There was a long, heavy moment where Kylo didn’t move from his position on top of Mitaka. He let his eyes close, his lips pressed to the hinge of the Lieutenant’s jaw as he slowly, gently rocked against him. He felt cotton-headed and bruised in the most satisfying way, though he did hazily wonder what sort of damage crowbarring both of them open with the Force could do. Mitaka kicked his feet weakly and Kylo finally took the sign to roll off of him, back onto his side. He watched with heavy-lidded eyes as he clumsily pulled off his ruined briefs and used them to clean himself with shaking hands. He sheepishly offered them to Kylo to do the same, but Kylo dismissed it with a wave of his hand. His own boxers were similarly soiled but he didn’t care. He could deal with it later. He liked the way Mitaka folded up the stained grey cloth and sat it on the bedside table carefully, like it could break somehow. He liked the marks he’d left on his wrists from holding him down, red and tender but not enough to leave a bruise.

Mitaka saw him staring at the marks. He smiled softly and leaned over to kiss him, lips brushing the corner of his mouth. It was oddly chaste, considering what they’d just done. Kylo felt cleaner for it, and for the silence like they’d both swallowed their tongues. Mitaka lay down again, his back to Kylo like he had been before; he wriggled closer to him, fussing over lying on the small wet spot. Kylo could sense the contentment in him, a sort of relief that was more than just physical, though he couldn’t pinpoint where it came from. The old anxiety of his departure was still there but it was already faded, pushed to the background as Kylo pulled the scratchy standard issue blanket over both of them. He slipped an arm around him, his hand on Mitaka’s chest to hold him close, and watched over him as he settle down to sleep.

\--

Kylo was still on the fringes of Mitaka’s mind as the Lieutenant fell asleep. It was a strange sensation, like sitting in the bath as the water drained away, or leaning against a door that gradually opened. He let the sinking, sucking feeling pull him down deeper into Mitaka’s subconscious than he’d been before. It was something he’d tried to avoid in the past and he felt like a burglar in the night, but with his natural defences slipping away, Mitaka wouldn’t even feel the intrusion. Kylo propped himself up on one elbow so he could see more of his face, a pale crescent picked out in the low light. He looked so young like that, so open. So safe. His breathing didn’t even change as Kylo sunk fingers deep into his head.

At first he skimmed aimlessly, trying to size up Mitaka in order to make sense of him. He wanted to know who he really was, what he really wanted, but Kylo found little more than the man he already knew: intelligent, lonely, frustrated. He seemed quite ordinary, or what Kylo figured ordinary was meant to be. He was a soft steel blue and the smell of caf, the feel of a freshly pressed shirt, the sound of fluttering wings and a steady green blinking light on a console. It was nice in its own way. Quiet, without the Force. 

Satisfied, Kylo narrowed his focus and began to search for himself—Matt, Kylo, either or both. Predictably Lord Ren scared Mitaka; what Kylo hadn’t expected was the overlap he shared with Mitaka’s own father and Hux in that regard. Their disapproving silences sounded too much the same to Mitaka, and they left him feeling cold and inadequate even when he succeeded in their tasks. Matt, however—Matt had a space all of his own. Thoughts of him leaked out over everything, crackling on the surface like static electricity and making it impossible to trespass in his head without feeling it. 

Mitaka’s mental image of Matt was one Kylo struggled to recognise. He was far more handsome than he really was. Mitaka thought he had sweet dark eyes and proud features, and even his ratty wig was cute in its own baffling way. He smiled more than he actually did. His mouth was generous and expressive, and Mitaka wanted to put his fingers on it, in it. He was bigger than he really was, and that confused Kylo the most because he actually  _ was _ big, but Matt filled the room, filled his line of sight, filled his head. He’d grown another foot taller when he’d pulled off his jumpsuit and revealed the body of a young god and not a radar technician; he’d grown another foot wider when he’d crawled into bed with Mitaka, curled around him, held him the way he still was. There was so much of him, he made Mitaka feel small but not insignificant. 

Mitaka had, at some point, considered telling his mother about Matt. He would have, if they’d been on better speaking terms. He thought he might be in love and wanted her advice on what to do next. The implications left Kylo off-balance. He’d never considered there might be a ‘next’, or a ‘more’, or anything other than what they were doing. 

Kylo unravelled himself from Mitaka’s mind, back into his own. He felt lead-limbed and tired with the first prickle of a headache he occasionally got when he spent too much time out of his own self. He wasn’t sure how to process what he’d found in Mitaka’s head, the latent desires, the depth of feelings. The whole thing had been little more than an exercise in vanity, one last go around before he left on his mission, but Kylo was still conflicted. No-one had ever been in love with him before, not even as a ‘maybe’.

Kylo sat up, put both feet on the floor and his head in his hands. He had to remind himself that Mitaka didn’t love him, not even as a ‘maybe’. He cared about Matt. How much of Matt was himself was irrelevant. 

He got up and went to the refresher to clean up a little. He kept the lights low and tried to get dressed as quietly as he could but Mitaka still woke up. He knew what Matt was doing, knew what it meant, so he kept his eyes shut and his face in the pillow and pretended to still be asleep. Kylo could tell; his sudden awareness was like someone turning on a radio. He sat on the edge of the bed until the static went off and Mitaka had slipped back into an unsettled sleep. While he waited, he thought about writing him a note, but he knew it would just sound disingenuous. He thought about parting with a kiss, but he didn’t want to wake up him again.

In the end, he just left.

\--

Over the course of the next few weeks, Kylo lent little thought to Mitaka, or Matt, or their awkward courtship. With the mission at such a critical point he had no focus to spare, certainly not on such comparatively trivial matters (he ignored the voice that said it hadn’t felt very trivial at the time). Overall the mission hadn’t been a success but nor had it been a total failure; they had achieved part of the objective, and sustained only minor injuries while doing so. It was on the u-class during the long return flight to the Finalizer he had the time to finally think about it all. 

He sat on a low bench, stripped to his waist while the mute Knight Ilyn Ren cleaned a long, lean cut on his back. It was part of their order to resist artificial medical assistance and to instead rely on each other for care, which made for many hours of dabbing and stitching and breathing through clenched teeth. The intimacy of it made Kylo miss his Lieutenant, who would probably be awful at that sort of thing. His hands would shake and he’d hate the idea of hurting Matt, even to help him. He’d be too gentle with him and try to avoid touching the wound for so long after it had healed, with awkward embraces and sleeping an arm’s length away until Kylo pulled him closer by force (force with a lowercase f, Kylo pressed, because he was just a radar technician). He sat with his head in his hands and it reminded him of the last night they had spent together. 

Ilyn put a hand on his flank, sensing his troubled thoughts and silently asking if there was a problem. Kylo leaned back against him, sent out threads of reassurance to all the Knights. He had been unfair to them; he had been unfair to Mitaka too. Decisions had to be made, things had to be set in motion. He wasn’t ready to give up on him, but he couldn’t live two split lives. At first he considered having Matt lost in the mission, to have the Lieutenant’s fears realised, but he nixed that thought immediately. The only other immediately viable option then would be to come clean and hope for the best. He meditated on the possibilities, the most likely of which would be initial rejection considering how Mitaka viewed Kylo Ren, but he was confident he’d come around eventually. 

He had to. He ‘maybe’ loved him, and Kylo ‘maybe’ loved him back.

\--

As soon as their boots were back on deck, Kylo made a break for Mitaka’s quarters, taking a detour to his own quarters only to change into Matt—perhaps for the last time. As eager as he was to see him, Kylo Ren showing up at his door in the middle of the off-cycle would probably give the poor Lieutenant a heart-attack. He forwent ringing the entrance alarm and instead quickly keyed in the entrance code, hoping to surprise Mitaka who was almost surely asleep.

However, it was Kylo who got the surprise when the door opened to reveal Mitaka standing in the middle of the room with a blaster levelled at him. Kylo took a half step forward, if only to let the door close behind him; Mitaka primed the weapon. 

“Not one step closer,” he said. His jaw was clenched and he wore a cool expression of steely resolve, “Are you with the Resistance?”

“What are you doing?” Kylo asked. His heart was starting to race, but not out of fear for his life. He could catch the bolt in mid-air, he could crush the blaster or the hand that held it before it could ever be fired. 

“Are you with the Resistance?” Mitaka repeated with more force. 

“No. No, of course I’m not. It’s me, Dop.” Mitaka’s mouth twitched at the use of the boyish nickname. He always protested when Matt called him that but he liked it really, liked the familiarity. He had to take a breath to steady himself, though his aim didn’t waver at all.

“But it's not, is it?” he said, “I pulled some favours to be one of the first to know when the u-class was on its way back. I pulled some more to get your personnel file, see if I could move your shore leave around. I have a week coming up soon, I thought we could—I wanted to surprise you with it. Go somewhere nice. There was a problem though: you don’t have a personnel file. You don’t have shore leave, because you don’t exist. There is no Matt the radar technician, or any other technician. You’re not part of this crew. So who are you, if you’re not Resistance? Old Empire? Merc?”

Kylo felt pinched. This was one possibility that he hadn’t considered. He didn’t have a contingency plan for this, so he solemnly pulled off the wig and tossed his glasses aside, shaking out his dark hair, “I am Kylo Ren.”

At first Mitaka seemed entirely unmoved, but Kylo could feel the hurt curling out of him. When he spoke again, his voice was strained and threatening to shake, “This is just a joke to you, isn’t it? Who put you up to it then? Thannison? Let’s all pull a fast one on Mitaka, right? Dopey Dopheld, who could ever like him. Who could ever want to be with him. Do you even care?”

“Mitaka, please—“ Kylo began, taking a step towards him but the Lieutenant moved further out of reach. The hand holding the blaster was trembling but he still hadn’t lowered it. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes wet.

“Get out,” he said, voice low, “If I ever see your face again, I swear to the void I won’t miss and hit the wall. Get  _ out _ .”

Kylo stared imploringly at Mitaka but couldn’t find a single thing to say – nothing that would help, anyway. The damage had been done and every single part of Mitaka that Kylo could read without violating him said it couldn’t be repaired. He left the Lieutenant’s quarters with Matt’s disguise grasped loosely in slack fingers. It would be the last time he wore it, if for reasons that couldn’t be further from what he’d hope.

\--

“Am I boring you, Lieutenant Mitaka? Is there some tremendously important appointment I’m keeping you from?”

Mitaka swallowed weakly as Hux closed in on him, “No, Sir.”

“Oh, I am  _ sorry _ . It’s just that your mind seems to be everywhere but on this bridge, Lieutenant. I didn’t want to think I was inconveniencing you in any way. This is just the order and balance of the entire universe at stake, of course” Hux continued archly in that awful needling way that meant whoever was on the receiving end of it was definitely marked.

“I’m sorry, Sir. I will try harder, Sir,” Mitaka said, but the General’s attention had shaken him. The whole Bridge stealing sly glances didn’t help much either. He bowed his head, trying to hide behind the brim of his low cap. 

Kylo stepped forward, coming to stop at Hux’s side. Both men turned to stare at him with very different expressions, “I would reconsider that tone of voice when talking to your men, General. Lieutenant Mitaka here is a credit to the First Order.”

Hux looked at him like he’d just trodden in something utterly disgusting; Mitaka was utterly agog. Kylo was glad for the helmet that hid his little smile. Decisions had been made and things had been set in motion after all.

He could hear birdsong.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up on my tumblr [broodmother](broodmother.tumblr.com) if you want to say hi.


End file.
